I know that grouping is an oft mentioned feature for a future version. I can imagine that it's no easy task to implement right. I did however want to lay out one specific use case where it would be extremely useful and maybe uncover a better way to do what I'm doing now....

Many of these designs I do have to fit with existing parts so I design with or around them so to speak. Often I'll download a part as a step file from grabcad et al, and then design my mating parts in MoI. These parts import great but are in most cases, not parts that can be joined because of flaws (I presume) in the model. I usually carefully select all the bits of the part and name them so that later I can use its name to select all of it before I move or rotate it.

So in my perfect world, I'd want to have an option on import that says, "keep together" or always work on on as a group, in effect it becomes locked together. In a case I want to modify the part I import, then fine, I'll not choose that option.

NB: I suppose as a small improvement to my process, one could have a script that asks for a name of the object upon import and assigns it in one step?

Michael:
I most certainly would relish a Group command that operates on any set of objects. I was just trying to explore if there was something I was missing in the current version that would make it easier to keep these imported objects together. I explored at one time how much work it as get all the edges joined up etc, and it became about the same amount of work as redrawing them!

I've seen in other software where upon import it automagically groups the objects (or not as an option) but it is indeed just a part of the group mechanism.

Hi Scott, well the problem is the current version just does not have the low level selection infrastructure that you need to enforce keeping things together. That's something that has to be done in the core selection engine, it's not really something that can be done with a script.

When I do have a proper group mechanism my current general plan is to have a checkbox option at grouping time for "Select as one", which can be turned on or off to control whether the group will select as one unit when you click on it or not.

Is there a script already that can be assigned to a key where if you select a named object, you can have it select all other objects of that same name? In that way, you could click on a part, and then make sure that all objects of the same name are then selected before moving.

Thanks for that script. I just tried it, but I get the following error message:

What´s wrong?

It´s the first script I try to install. Just took the script text, put it into text editor, converted to plain text, and changed the fileformat to .js . Then I put it into the commands folder and assigned a shortcut to it.